London's NextSTEP backs Italian food waste AI startup Ganiga in €2.5m round
Pisa-based Ganiga has closed a €2.5 million funding package with UK investor NextSTEP among the backers, as it expands its AI-driven food waste system beyond robotic sorting.
UK investor joins Italian waste-tech round
Italian deeptech startup Ganiga has raised €1.5 million in an equity round to develop its AI-powered waste management technology further and support its commercial expansion. The round was led by Italian contract catering company Vivenda, with participation from London-based investor NextSTEP and three angel investors.
Combined with €1 million secured through Smart&Start Italia, an incentive programme run by state agency Invitalia, Ganiga’s total funding now stands at €2.5 million. The involvement of NextSTEP gives the deal a UK dimension, with a London investor backing a European deeptech company tackling food waste through artificial intelligence.
From robotic sorting to food waste data
Ganiga was founded in the province of Pisa by Nicolas Zeoli. The company began by building robotic devices that identify and separate different types of waste, and has since sold more than 300 of these units to airports, shopping centres and large businesses across Italy, Japan, Australia and other European markets.
Using data gathered from those deployments, Ganiga has since moved into food waste management specifically, launching a system called HooolyFood. It uses cameras mounted above waste containers to identify discarded food without the need for weighing, feeding data back to catering operators on purchasing, menu planning and cost control. Developed in under a year, HooolyFood is already running in operations handling more than 30,000 meals a day.
The company’s wider data platform pulls information from its devices into a single dashboard, allowing operators to track waste patterns, estimate costs and monitor how full containers are. Ganiga is also working on extending the technology to automate ingredient ordering and menu planning, as well as developing sensors that can be fitted to existing containers to monitor municipal and other waste streams.
Regulatory push behind the funding
The round lands as the European Union introduces binding targets to cut food waste by 2030. Eurostat data cited in the announcement puts EU food waste at around 58 million tonnes in 2023, underlining the scale of the problem across food services and other industries.
Founder and chief executive Nicolas Zeoli said the new funding would help scale technology already in commercial use. “For a canteen, knowing which dishes are being wasted and why provides actionable data to inform purchasing, menu planning and service delivery,” he said. “The new EU directive makes food waste reduction a binding target, and you cannot reduce what you do not measure.”
What it means for Ganiga and what’s next
With the fresh capital, Ganiga plans to grow its technical and commercial teams, continue developing HooolyFood and its data platform, and build up recurring revenue. The company intends to focus first on expanding within contract catering alongside Vivenda before moving into event catering, hotels and other foodservice settings.
For the UK ecosystem, the deal is a reminder that British investors such as NextSTEP are backing early-stage deeptech outside the UK, in sectors tied to EU sustainability rules. Watch for whether Ganiga’s expansion into hotels and events brings it into UK foodservice markets, and whether NextSTEP follows up with further investment as the company scales.